Josie Lawrence And Joe McGann Star In LOVE LIES BLEEDING By Don DeLillo

Josie Lawrence and Joe McGann lead the cast in the first UK production of American literary icon Don DeLillo's Love-Lies-Bleeding. The Print Room rounds off a year of bold and innovative theatre, dance, poetry and film with this perceptive and surprisingly witty story about a family trying to take death into their own hands.

Set in the sprawling south-western American desert, at the frontier between the man-made and the wilderness, artist Alex Macklin has abandoned his easel to make monumental land art. A second major stroke renders him speechless and motionless. He is kept alive only by feeding and hydration tubes and his desperate fourth wife. Then Alex's second wife and his only son, who has been online researching ways to end his father's life, arrive to decide his fate. With jet black humour, profound insight and moving sensitivity, DeLillo discusses one of our most urgent contemporary debates - what does being alive mean?

Don DeLillo, whose work includes White Noise and Underworld, and whose fans range from Salman Rushdie to Kate Tempest, has received awards and nominations for over 40 prizes including the Pulitzer, PEN/Faulkner and Man Booker International Prize. An incisive and almost prophetic thinker about American society, DeLillo's Love-Lies-Bleeding, written in 2005 long before the public conversation about euthanasia became mainstream, is no exception.

The play will be directed by Jack McNamara, who has a long history with author Don DeLillo, and is the only director in the UK to have staged his work. His production of DeLillo's play Valparaiso received five star reviews across the board and helped win a Peter Brook/Empty Space Award
for the venue. His world premiere of DeLillo's environmentalist play The Word for Snow sold out during its run at the Southbank Centre.

For me, each of Don DeLillo's novels are works of monumental genius, that have taught me more about the world we live in than any other works of fiction. In his plays, that genius becomes funnelled down into highly concentrated form. In the case of Love-Lies-Bleeding, the result is a beautifully minimal yet profoundly complex story, packed with a sharp comedy and insight that only DeLillo could write. I can think of no other writer whose world I would be more excited about sharing. Jack McNamara

Set and costumes are designed by Lily Arnold, with lighting by Azusa Ono and sound by Alexandra Faye Braithwaite.

Josie Lawrence recently completed filming on the upcoming Amazon series Good Omens, playing Agnes Nutter. She became a household name in Who's Line Is It Anyway? and is a
founder member of The Comedy Store Players with whom she still performs. On stage, she won the Peggy Ashcroft Award for The Taming Of The Shrew at RSC, she also won the Manchester Evening News Award for Best Actress for Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. Theatre highlights also include Frozen at The National Theatre, The King & I at the London Palladium and Acorn Antiques The Musical at Theatre Royal, Haymarket. She received critical acclaim for her title role in Mother Courage And Her Children at Southwark Playhouse. On screen, she had her own Channel 4 series Josie, and featured in Outside Edge, Enchanted April, Finding Your Feet, Humans, Stella, The Good Guide To Parenting, Eastenders, Robin Hood, The Old Curiosity Shop and Skins.

Joe McGann's theatre roles include The Last Ship (Northern Stage and Tour); Elf (Plymouth Theatre Royal/ Bord Gais Energy Theatre, Dublin, Dominion Theatre, West End, and Lowry, Salford); April in Paris (UK Tour); Hope Place (Liverpool Everyman); Love Billy (Lyric, Belfast);
The Rise and Fall of Little Voice (UK Tour); The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Chichester Festival Theatre, Duchess London) and Calendar Girls (three UK tours), Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof (UK Tour, 2008) and Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls (ATG UK Tour, 2006), Fool for Love (Found 111), Tom, Dick and Harry (Duke of York's Theatre); Of Mice and Men (Old Vic); Oliver! (London Palladium), the one-man play One Fine Day (Albery) and Yakety Yak (Astoria).

TV includes: probably his best-known lead role as Charlie Burrows in the comedy series The Upper Hand, The Hanging Gale (which Joe and his brothers co-produced), Night and Day, Rockliffe's Babies, All Creatures Great and Small, Harry Enfield and Chums, Casualty, My Family, Doctors, Heartbeat and most recently Moving On, Midsomer Murders and Harley and The Davidsons. Film includes: Property of the State (2015); The Murderers (2015); Splinter (2006); Puckoon (2002); The Brylcreem Boys (1998) and Banana Skins (2014).

Director JACK MCNAMARA: An award-winning director and theatre maker based in Nottingham. Jack runs New Perspectives; the largest touring theatre company in the East Midlands region. His work for the company has transferred to London and off-Broadway and will soon tour from Singapore to Sarajevo. He has directed productions by writers including Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, Jane Upton, David Rudkin, Athol Fugard, Daphne Du Maurier, John Harvey and Richard Bean. Other work includes his adaptation of Lars Von Trier's film The Boss of it All at Soho Theatre, Malmo State Theatre and National Theatre Bergen, Sisyphus, with Belgian performance artist Thibault Delferiere, and his recent production of the Booker-nominated Nigerian novel The Fishermen sold out in Manchester, London and Edinburgh.

Dates: Friday 9 November - Saturday 8 December

Times: Evenings Mon - Sat at 7.30pm Press Night Tue 13 November at 7pm

Prices: £25 / £20 All Concessions £15
£8.50 Wednesdays: All tickets £8.50. 14, 21, 28 Nov, 5 Dec

To Book: Box Office: 020 3642 6606 www.the-print-room.org or in person. Address: 103 Notting Hill Gate, London, W11 3LB.
Nearest tube: Notting Hill
Website: www.the-print-room.org t: @the_printroom

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